Early in the 2015 baseball season, I noticed that the responses players were giving in postgame scrums occasionally provided unexpected insight into how we could all better live our lives. Like most fans, I had long believed that the game provides a template for how to live a happier, more fulfilling existence, but this acute realization inspired a personal project—compiling these sometimes-thoughtful quotes and distributing them to the masses.
Thus, Baseball Life Advice was born, a humble weekly newsletter that offered, among other things, an inspiring quote from a player, manager, or sportswriter that could be applied to our experiences off the field. On May 1, 2015, I sent out the very first edition to 111 subscribers, featuring a piece of silver-lining optimism care of Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons: “We didn’t get a lot of hits, but it sure felt like we hit some balls hard.” (The Jays lost that game, 4–1, to the Red Sox, and the team was, at the time, last in the division.)
Over the months and years that followed, the newsletter has evolved and its followers have grown into the thousands. It has become a place where I share my work and my thoughts on the game, and where I connect with a variety of fans from across the league, but my initial mission to bring a tiny nugget of baseball life advice to readers remains the same. Some of these collected quotations appear throughout this book, and I hope they bring a little joy and insight into your life—just like they did for me.